In 1930, the first supermarket that looked something like modern supermarkets opened in Queen's, New York. Patrons often thought of these drive-ins as a single business, even though each subset was independently owned. The more important ancestor of the supermarket was the "drive-in," where independently-owned grocers, bakers, butchers, and produce vendors would set up shop in a common space, sharing a large, free parking lot, and allowing customers to get all of their shopping done in one place. Prior to the 1930s, shoppers in the United States generally had to travel to several different locations to buy the different foods they needed.Īs early as the 1920s, some grocers began to experiment with offering meat counters or small produce sections. At the time, the word "grocer," like "butcher," "baker" or "produce vendor." While shoppers would go to butchers to buy meat and bakers to buy bread, they would go to grocers to buy dry goods, like flour, sugar, coffee, and canned items. Grocer + Baker + Produce Vendor + Butcher = Supermarket The transition to self-service model allowed grocers to operate more efficiently by replacing the need for large numbers of clerks with only a few cashiers. On that date in 1916, the first Piggly Wiggly store opened its doors in Memphis, Tennessee, with the radical idea that stores could save money by putting their stocks on shelves and allowing the public to wander through them, gathering their selections in a basket and paying before they left.īefore Piggly Wiggly introduced its self-service system, shoppers would provide their grocery lists to store clerks, who would gather the items from stock shelves on their behalf. September 6, 2011, was the 95th birthday of the self-service shopping experience born in the United States and now common throughout much of the world.
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